What is a VPN, and what does it do?
Virtual Private network
It gives dumb people a feeling of anonymity while providing very little (unless it’s a Private, VPN and not a commercial one)
Think of it like a tunnel that you go in on your device and come out somewhere else so the rest of the world only really see’s somewhere else.
It also makes it impossible to intercept local traffic which Is the Viable use for a VPN if you are on a Public WIFI it masks all your traffic… which is a good thing.
A Virtual Private Network.
Without going into too much detail - it bounces your request to load webpages through a bunch of severs all over the planet in an effort to disguise your web traffic.
Its like a proxy, imagine you want to go buy condoms but you’re worried your friends will see you at the supermarket, so you get some guy no one knows to do it for you, then it makes it a lot harder for people to know you’re buying condoms.
A VPN makes a connection to a remote computer where the connection is encrypted so it can’t be read by anyone else. The VPN then takes all your internet connections and re-sends them through that connection instead, and at the other server they are sent out normally.
So from your computer to the remote computer no one can see what you are doing on the internet.
The other computer can be in a different country, which is a way people can get around sites that block content based on what country you’re in.
So the two main uses of a VPN are: 1. to hide your internet traffic and 2. to get around country restrictions.
It could also be handy to get around situations where your internet provider (such as a school, or a restrictive internet company) blocks content you want to see, although most of those cases also block VPNs as well.
That sounds more like Tor
Virtual Private Network, but yes making it seem that a remote computer is on the local network is what they are for.